Source: The Boston Globe
After the devastating cyclone that hit Burma on May 2, one of the shocks for the world community has been the Burmese government's resistance to accepting money, supplies, and aid from the many countries offering help.
Already the death toll is predicted to reach 100,000, and countless people are still facing starvation and disease. But the generals who rule Burma have denied permission for American and French relief teams to enter the country. The military junta has also delayed visas for United Nations aid workers, barred US military planes from delivering supplies, and on Friday seized two planeloads of food intended for survivors.
Although it might seem atrocious that a government would refuse help for its own people, the generals' actions actually make sense - for them. In recent years, analysts who study international politics have found, natural disasters often have powerful political consequences in the countries where they hit, and the process of recovery often creates openings for political reform and change.
In Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and other countries, major natural disasters have been catalysts for significant political changes. These transformations have included reconciliation of domestic conflicts, a truce between longtime enemies, or a new openness to outside ideas that arrive with international assistance.
The experience of these counties suggests that no aid, no matter how humanitarian in intent, is purely apolitical. To Burma's iron-fisted military junta, such aid may look more like a threat than a lifeline. And even if its suspicion of foreign aid is misplaced, Burma's repressive military dictatorship would be right to see the disaster as a threat to its own survival.
The generals who rule Burma don't have to look farther than their neighbors for examples. The massive 2004 Asian tsunami destroyed much of Aceh, a province in Indonesia where Islamist separatists had been battling the Indonesian security forces for a generation. The tidal wave wiped out many of the separatists' bases, and fostered public sympathy for a region whose years of bloodshed had strained Indonesians' patience. As massive teams of outside relief workers arrived in the province, the sharply changed atmosphere allowed Jakarta and the rebels to consider a real peace process, which was quickly implemented. Today, after the staggering loss of life and property, Aceh has been largely rebuilt, peace has come to the province, and it is governed by a former separatist leader who was freely elected last year.
Similarly, in Sri Lanka, the carnage from the 2004 tsunami helped bring together adversaries in the long civil war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and the Tamil Tiger rebels. Partly because the two sides had to cooperate in recovery efforts, they were able to push forward their own peace process. When I visited the country the year after the devastation, much of the once-violent island, though still dotted with aid agencies' tarpaulin shacks, was relatively placid. (Since then, however, the peace talks have faltered after the rise of hard-line leadership in the Sri Lankan government.)
The tsunami was hardly unique in its political aftereffects. Numerous earthquakes have brought about similar changes. In 2005, the earthquake in Kashmir, the mountain region disputed by India and Pakistan, sparked an outpouring of aid from the Indian government, which helped boost good will between the two bitterly antagonistic countries. This then led to increased talks on Kashmir's future and even a series of India-Pakistan cricket matches that captivated both nations.
In 1999, after an earthquake leveled much of Izmit, Turkey, killing as many as 45,000 people, the first country to publicly offer assistance was neighboring Greece - the historical enemy of Turkey. The gesture, and Turkey's acceptance of the assistance, prompted a new détente in Greek-Turkish relations. (Thailand's recent offer of aid to Burma may be a similar kind of gesture, showing that the new, democratically elected Thai government has little intention of taking a harder line against the repressive generals.)
Natural disasters can also trigger grass-roots changes within a country, especially when a government's failure to respond adequately leads to anger and unrest within the populace, and the population sees their government calling in foreign assistance because it cannot handle the recovery. The United States even experienced something of this during Hurricane Katrina, when the Bush administration's slow response led to a steep decline in the president's popularity from which he has not recovered.
In countries with less stable political systems, bigger change can follow. Mark Pelling and Kathleen Dill of King's College in London, who have studied natural disasters and reform, note that the 2004 earthquake in Morocco launched an outpouring of public protest, rare in that authoritarian country; the anger may have contributed to greater Moroccan support for Islamist parties, known for their extensive post-disaster relief operations. In an even more extreme example, vast popular unrest in then-East Pakistan after a 1970 cyclone that killed some 500,000 people sparked an independence movement that led to the establishment of Bangladesh.
Some democracy activists and analysts are hoping the cyclone will trigger internal political reform in Burma, where the population has lived under a military regime since 1962. In the past week, average Burmese have faced massive lines and outright shortages of basic goods - a significant problem for a junta that constantly emphasizes that the army is the only glue holding the ethnically diverse society together. Riots already are breaking out in some towns, and opposition groups have moved quickly to highlight the military's poor response.
"Where are the police? Where's the army?" Soe Aung, spokesman for a leading opposition group based in Thailand, said to reporters. "They were always ready when there were demonstrations to beat up people and shoot at them, but now where are they?"
Indeed, as Burmese people increasingly see their government having to accept massive aid from foreigners, their anger could increase. And relief workers from outside offer more than just a helping hand: They represent contact and information about the outside world, from which Burma's regime has fiercely shielded its population.
But observers' optimism may well be misplaced. Burma is a far more totalitarian state than Indonesia, Pakistan, or even Morocco; public opinion essentially does not matter to the junta. Burma's generals, though hardly worldly - Senior General Than Shwe reputedly has only an elementary school education - also certainly know how to hang onto power.
One of its strategies has been to resist outside help, even for humanitarian disasters. The 2004 tsunami also hit Burma hard, but the military regime essentially refused assistance. The junta declined to even provide reliable figures of the casualty and damage count, and to this day, no one knows how many people died in Burma during the tidal wave.
And in recent years, the junta, which allowed UN agencies into the country to help manage problems like Burma's looming HIV crisis, essentially forced one group after the next to leave. In 2005, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, a multinational organization, ultimately abandoned a $37.5 million proposed project to combat these diseases in Burma after the government imposed too many restrictions.
There are signs, however, that the junta realizes that this disaster may be the one that tests its grip. After the cyclone, the Burmese military postponed voting in affected regions on a proposed referendum scheduled for this month. Though the vote was essentially a sham designed to help cement the regime's grip on power, the cyclone has made everything in Burma less certain. After all, as average Burmese see the frail response from a seemingly omnipotent regime, they might begin wondering what other weaknesses the junta is hiding.
Joshua Kurlantzick is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace